Typhoon Parma bearing down on the Philippines

In what must be considered one of the worst times in recent history for Asia, the monsoon season of 2009 has become one of the worst years ever recorded. With the passing of Typhoon Ondoy, also known as Typhoon Ketsana killing more than 300 people and displacing several hundred thousand people from their homes, caused the evacuation of nearly 567,000 people.  Another Typhoon is bearing down on the storm-ravaged nation of islands. Typhoon Parma is now expected to make landfall Saturday afternoon. Also known as Typhoon Pepeng, is now approaching the coastline of Luzon, the largest of the Philippine Islands. This is the same area hit just last week  from the killer storms. It is expected that another 8 to 20 more inches of rain will fall with this next storm, and people now are rushing again to the stores to stock up on drinking water, canned food and electrical supplies.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroya placed the country "under the state of calamity" in preparation for Parma's landfall. This time around, evacuations have been ordered and if needed, forced evacuations will take place. The order focusus on Camarines Norte, Aurora, northern Quezon, Polillo Island, Isabela and Cagayan.
Last week, 80 percent of the capital, Manila, was under water after experiencing the heaviest rainfall in 40 years. The last store killed at least 74 people in Vietnam and nine in Cambodia.

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This Week In Magazines: Obama The "Self-Entangling Giant"

The following is an excerpt from a HuffPost blog entry by James Warren about topics featured in magazines this week.


No matter how much he might disdain the George W. Bush presidency, especially when it comes to misuse of executive branch power, Barack Obama may be a "self-entangling giant" who is going down the same perilous path argues no less an initial Obama sympathizer than journalist-historian Garry Wills in the Oct. 8 New York Review of Books.

Wills, a Northwestern University historian emeritus, argues in "Entangled Giant" that Bush left office unpopular and disgraced, with Obama set on ending illegal acts like torture and indefinite detentions, denial and legal representation to detainees, and nullification of laws by signing statements, among others. But he then contends that, "The momentum of accumulating powers in the executive is not easily reversed, checked or even slowed."
Our entire post-World War 2 history "caused an inertial transfer of power toward the executive branch," replete with a de facto monopoly on nuclear power, a vast worldwide network of military bases, the systems of classification and clearance, the "war on terror" and what Wills calls the "cult of the commander in chief." And while Obama has taken certain steps, like announcing the future closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, there are other actions and statements that give pause: the CIA asserting that it may retain the practice of sending prisoners to foreign nations; the Justice Department decision to abort a trial by invoking "state secrets"; refusing to release photographs of "enhanced interrogation"; the release of gay personnel from the U.S. military at rates equivalent to the Bush years; and what Wills deems Obama's defiance of the Constitution's "full faith and credit" clause, mandating states to recognize laws passed by other states, via Obama's defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, allowing states to refuse to recognize other states' approval of gay marriages.

Most of his case involves national defense and he concedes, "It should come as no surprise that turning around the huge secret empire built by the National Security State is a hard, perhaps impossible, task." In sum, he argues that Obama will become a prisoner of the national security prison we've built over decades; an empire of military bases and imperial dealings largely unknown to the average citizen.

"He feels he must avoid embarrassing the hordes of agents, military personnel, and diplomatic instruments whose loyalty he must command," writes Wills. "Keeping up morale in this vast, shady enterprise is something impressed on him by all manner of commitments. He becomes the prisoner of his own power. As President Truman could not not use the bomb, a modern president cannot not use the huge powers at his disposal. It has all been given him as the legacy of Bomb Power, the thing that makes him not only Commander in Chief but Leader of the Free World. He is a self-entangling giant."

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Michelle Obama To Women: Do What Makes You Happy

DARLENE SUPERVILLE | 09/28/09 11:21 AM | AP

WASHINGTON — First lady Michelle Obama says women should do what makes them happy, a lesson she says she learned after realizing her two children, her husband and her physical health feed off of her good moods.

In an interview appearing in the November issue of Prevention magazine, Mrs. Obama discusses the meaning of good health, aging and her exercise, diet and beauty routines. She sat for the interview at the White House in late July.

Mrs. Obama says she learned "what not to do" from her mother, Marian Robinson, who now lives at the White House.

"She'd say being a good mother isn't all about sacrificing. It's really investing and putting yourself higher on your priority list," Mrs. Obama said. She said Robinson put her own two children first, sometimes to the detriment of herself.

"She encouraged me not to do that," Mrs. Obama said.

The first lady said there are many facets to good health – physical, internal, emotional, diet – and all are intertwined.

"Throughout my life, I've learned to make choices that make me happy and make sense for me. Even my husband is happier when I'm happy," Mrs. Obama said in her first interview with the women's health monthly. "So I have freed myself to put me on the priority list and say, yes, I can make choices that make me happy, and it will ripple and benefit my kids, my husband and my physical health."

"That's hard for women to own. We're not taught to do that," she added. "It's a lesson that I want to teach my girls."

Asked for a definition of happiness, Mrs. Obama said it's when daughters Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, "are good and when my family is whole." She expressed relief that early in the year after moving from Chicago the girls came and told her they liked living in the White House.

"My happiness is measured against theirs. When they're in a good place, I feel really good," she said.

Mrs. Obama, who is 45 and appears on the magazine's cover, also said she has no fear about getting old.

"To me, with age, everything has gotten better," the first lady said.

She strives to be "on the cusp of being in the best shape that I can be" in, but has found she needs to work a little harder at it the older she gets. As a result, she has begun to incorporate more Pilates moves and stretching into her workouts to maintain flexibility.

Mrs. Obama also is working on balancing out her diet, which she said has "no absolute no's."

"Overall, it's good, but there are some great bakers" at the White House, she said, noting that pie is always available. "So for me, it's about setting up new boundaries. I had some challenges with that, but I'm balancing out."

The November issue of Prevention hits newsstands on Oct. 6.

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